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“Why?”

His eyes met mine. “I did not want to go home.”

There.

No duty. No mission.

Just truth.

“Because they died.”

“Yes.”

“And you lived.”

His jaw tightened. “Yes. I believed returning would require me to explain why.”

I frowned. “Explain why you survived?”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know.”

The admission was quiet.

“That did not make it less true.”

I looked at him for a long time.

Eight years. Not one decision repeated exactly the same way.

One choice made while injured and grieving, then reinforced every time going back became harder. I understood that more than I wanted to.

My mother had left for a distant settlement on Earth believing a different life might exist somewhere else. I had stayed because the life I knew felt safer than one I could not predict.

Veyr had done the opposite. He had left because going home meant facing something he could not survive by procedure.

Different choices. Same lie underneath them.

Familiar pain could start to feel like control if you lived inside it long enough.

“Did you ever think about going back?”

His expression shifted. “I did.”

“Why didn’t you?”

A long pause.

“Because every year made the explanation larger.”

That hurt more than I expected.

I looked down at my hands.

One question remained. Not because I needed to punish him with it. Because I wanted to understand the moment everything changed.